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According to a press release dated today, the Brooklyn D.A.’s office has obtained guilty pleas from two defrocked brokers in Clinton Hill. This is, of course, a good thing. Not clear if any of the complainants were local. My guess is none. (This is one of the great advantages of white-collar crime: you can rip people off with very little risk you’ll run into them at the grocery store). From the press release:

Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes today announced the conviction of two formerly licensed stockbrokers, Damascus Lee and Ian Bynoe, who created a fake real estate investment firm to launch a million-dollar securities fraud.
 
Bynoe and Lee both pleaded guilty to all the charges facing them, including Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree, and Money Laundering in the Second Degree. They will be sentenced December 3, to two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half years in prison.

As a condition of their plea, Bynoe and Lee will each be required to pay $200,000 in restitution. Should they fail to make payments, their sentences will be increased to four to 12 years.

Assistant District Attorneys Bryan Wallace and Michael Vaccaro prosecuted the case. Nice work.

Lee, 35, and Bynoe, 34, created a fake real estate development company called Vanguard Development and Management and then sold stock in it. The company was based in Wyoming but did no actual business. However, from the J.P. Turner & Company branch office they operated at 469 Clinton Ave., in Clinton Hill, Lee and Bynoe had other stock brokers working for them contact potential investors around the world. The brokers Lee and Bynoe supervised told potential clients that investments in Vanguard Development were officially approved by J.P. Turner, when no such approval existed. They were also told to say the company had incredible growth potential and would go public within a year to a year and a half.